July 25, 2023 • 48 mins
The trial picks up steam. On the witness stand, Marinda Steyn claims she is the mastermind behind the murders. Cecilia denies knowing anything about it and Zak Valentine claims he can’t remember. Le Roux and John Barnard’s confessions help the case against EPD, but Marcel’s catharsis becomes the final missing puzzle piece. Collectively the group is sentenced to over two thousand years in prison.
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Speaker 1 (00:02):
School of Humans.
Speaker 2 (00:05):
This show follows the investigation of serial murders and contains
material that may be disturbing. Listener discretion advised.
Speaker 3 (00:18):
In May of twenty eighteen, the case against Cecilia Stein
and Electus Perdeis was moved from district to High Court.
Since the group's arrest in twenty sixteen, nearly two years
had gone by. In that time, Ben Boysen had to
reassemble case files from six years prior and piece together
(00:38):
all that had happened since twenty twelve in order to
connect EPD to the murders and get them convicted. Back
in twenty sixteen, John Barnard turned state's witness. He'd agreed
to testify against EPD, which got him out of a
life sentence he would serve twenty years. LaRue was also
(00:59):
now a fitly a witness for the state. His testimony
against Cecilia, his mother, and Zach Valentine is how the
prosecution tied EPD to the twenty twelve murders. LaRue and
John Barnard's statements, paired with all the evidence gathered by
detectives Susette Canose and Captain Johann ban Vick, made epd's
involvement plausible beyond a reasonable doubt, not to mention the
(01:24):
guns in Mirinda's classroom and the blood found on her carpet,
blood later discovered to be that of Anthony Schofield. Psychologist
Rosalind McNabb was hired by the state to advocate for Marcel,
who was under age when the crimes were committed. Like
all those who heard Marinda's accounts of the murders, McNabb
(01:46):
recalls being deeply disturbed.
Speaker 4 (01:48):
On the stand, she lied blatantly to save Cecilia. I
killed Reginald, and I enjoyed every minute of an antit
it because I want to and I wanted to feel
the power, and went into great GORYGGI detail about how
she did it and saying it had nothing to do
(02:11):
with Cecilia.
Speaker 3 (02:12):
Marinda Steyne was served eleven life sentences and one hundred
and fifteen years for eleven murders. The two years that
LaRue spent behind bars provided him ample time to consider
the sting of his mother's betrayal, her many betrayals, but
especially the altering of her will. On the stand, Marinda
(02:35):
claimed she was the mastermind behind all the murders and
implicated l Ruin Zach in her statements, she excluded Cecilia
and Marcel from this testimony. In a rare act of
motherly love. For his testimony, LaRue was offered a reduced
sentence of twenty five years. Ben Boysen remembers the verdict
(02:56):
against LaRue.
Speaker 5 (02:58):
LaRue Croit when found guilty and in front of his mother,
he said, thank you captain for sending this pitch to
jail and pointing at his mother. So yeah, I think
at that stage he made peace with himself that his
mother actually forced him to commit murdered.
Speaker 3 (03:21):
Cecilia, Zach, and Marcel all pleaded not guilty. Cecilia to
this day claims she knew nothing and had nothing to
do with the murders. She told me herself when I
spoke to her in prison.
Speaker 6 (03:35):
No one can force you to do anything. There's no
such thing as the devil made me do it. There's
no such thing as God made me do it. We
make our own choices, we act on our own impulses.
And Marchelle and LaRue has the reasons they did what
they did. And yeah, there's nothing anybody can say to
change someone else's mind.
Speaker 3 (03:57):
From School of Humans and I Heeart podcasts This is
Queen Havoc and Her Murder Cult. I'm your host Kurt Kupachek,
Episode ten, Court for the Queen. In twenty eighteen, the
(04:19):
year following the initial sentencing of Mirinda and LaRue, the
state called fifty two out of about two hundred witnesses
to testify against three members of Electus Perdais.
Speaker 7 (04:29):
The three that eventually winter trial was a Celia Zak.
Speaker 3 (04:34):
And Marsell Ben told us about how he had to
be careful when choosing who to call to the stand.
Anyone who believed Cecilia had ties to Satanism could have
confused the judge. Way back in the first episode we
talked about how the judicial system does take Satanism seriously,
(04:54):
but as we now know, her Satanic past was nothing
but a tool Cecilia used to convince her followers to
commit these horrendous crimes. Any connection to the devil was
contrived with no bearing on the murders themselves.
Speaker 5 (05:09):
At the end of the day, what is the dud's
going to believe in? What he is not going to believe?
You understand? So we needed to choose our witnesses to
prove our cast and not to damage our case.
Speaker 3 (05:22):
Even so, considering all that EPD had gotten away with
up to this point, faith in the judicial system was
hard to come by.
Speaker 5 (05:30):
Even when we started going to courte there was doubt
in the family's eyes that these people eventually going to
be found guilty.
Speaker 3 (05:41):
Jana Marx, working as a courtroom journalist at the time,
was used to watching trials. Yanna kept a keen eye
on all the witness's behavior and body language. She noticed
that Cecilia appeared completely unfazed by the proceedings. She Zach
and Marcel, at least at first, stuck together like a
(06:01):
little clique, hiding behind their witty rapport.
Speaker 7 (06:05):
They started as a very chetty group, a lot of fun,
fun and games. Celia is very now, she's very lively,
and she tells jokes, and that happened in court the
second They made little personal jokes and they pointed and
stayed at people, and that's.
Speaker 2 (06:21):
How it started.
Speaker 3 (06:27):
One of the key witnesses they mocked was Ria Grunivald,
epd's first victim, at least in a psychological sense, and
Cecilia's apparent motivation for the revenge killings. In twenty twelve.
It took weeks for state prosecutors and police to convince
Rhea to come out of hiding and appear in court.
(06:47):
She did so only under the condition that no photographs
be taken of her. Her testimony brought her into the
same room as Cecilia and EPD for the first time
in five years. Yanna reported that Rhea addressed the room,
stating Ria Grunivald is dead. She no longer exists. I've
(07:09):
lost everything when they died. I died. Ria's written testimony.
Speaker 8 (07:15):
Read it was a very difficult time, and I was
not able to discuss it with anyone, fearing that Sea
could be punished for speaking out. I had to be
strong for her. She also isolated me from everyone I knew.
She lied about everything. I couldn't do anything without them
(07:39):
knowing I believed her. I then decided to end my
commitment to see and I set up that appointment with
her where I was threatened. They raised his history.
Speaker 3 (07:56):
With eleven others killed. Rhea managed to escape from the
board texts of Cecilia Stein with her life. However, she
is still paying a high price. Rea lost her home,
her livelihood, she lost contact with her children, and the
rest of her family existence. As she knew it ceased.
(08:17):
It's like her life was murdered, but she went on living.
Speaker 5 (08:21):
She didn't even admit to me where she went into.
Stay till today, I Tilda and don't speak to her
a grand till Duncia. So she's still in hiding today,
Someway in South Africa.
Speaker 3 (08:38):
Some of the witnesses that took the stand included members
of Cecilia's outer circle, folks involved in the Know Your
Enemy classes she held for a time back in twenty twelve.
Neighbors of the murder victims and members of the task
team also testified. Here's Detective Hert Krueger.
Speaker 9 (08:56):
There was the witness. They were having a party next
to the house where mister McGregor was staying. They said
it was a white female where had a very funny
She was walking funny. They described it like almost like
walking like a duck and that was Merendo.
Speaker 3 (09:13):
Even Luke came out of witness protection to testify against
them and report on his chilling time around the group.
As Cecilia, Zach and Marcel witnessed their damning testimony, they
became increasingly less chummy. Their body language began to reflect
the degradation of Cecilia's mind control.
Speaker 7 (09:34):
As more testimony came forward, more evidence came forward, as
if the group literally a physically moved away from one
another on the bench.
Speaker 3 (09:44):
The more Cecilia allowed everyone else to take the blame
for her, the more Zach and Marcel recoiled.
Speaker 7 (09:50):
See how it was in the middle still just you know,
observing writings. She took notes.
Speaker 3 (09:56):
That's right, Cecilia took notes. She had I had to
keep her story straight.
Speaker 7 (10:01):
And you have Zach Valentine. Zach would literally sit on
one butt cheek like he's going to fall off the
bench at any moment. He was so far away, just
to say, away from her, and Marcel the same.
Speaker 6 (10:14):
On the other.
Speaker 3 (10:15):
Side, Marcel was in a dark place throughout the proceedings.
Each time she was called to the stand, she denied
everything which implicated her brother and made way for her
mother to continue to sacrifice her own life in exaltation
of Cecilia.
Speaker 7 (10:35):
So Mosel obviously grew more and more depressed as she realized, okay, well,
see you set up the whole trial. She planned the
whole trial in advance, and Marcel went with it.
Speaker 3 (10:45):
Ben tried talking to Marcel, but she was reluctant, even
to the point of self sabotage.
Speaker 5 (10:51):
Marcel from the beginning told me to go fuck myself.
That was her wit, her father, a real father, Rainstel lawyers,
a good advocate, and she said no, she doesn't want them,
and she's not guilty.
Speaker 3 (11:10):
Remember, the primary charge was racketeering. This was used as
a pathway to prove their involvement in the murders. This
risky and unprecedented strategy turned out to be a clever
move on Ben's Park.
Speaker 5 (11:23):
This is the first guise in the history of South Africa.
Were murderers our charged with with racketeering and was found
guilty in the I court.
Speaker 3 (11:32):
So, even though each EPD defendant had their own lawyers,
allegations against one implicated them all as.
Speaker 7 (11:40):
The trial progressed, and obviously they had their own legal representatives,
and every legal council obviously wants to exonerate their own
client and they would throw the others under the bus.
Speaker 3 (11:54):
Zach held fast to the story that he didn't remember anything,
even the day that his car caught on fire, but
Marinda describing his direct involvement while on the stand revealed
suspicious inconsistencies in the narrative. This prolonged the trial over
the course of three years from twenty sixteen through twenty nineteen.
(12:16):
Electis Perdaeis only spent a total of sixty days in court,
but prosecutors were relentless in their pursuit of the truth.
The most critical testimonies, though, were the ones given by
LaRue and Barnard. Again, Jana Marx noted LaRue's physical and
emotive language.
Speaker 7 (12:36):
LaRue not a small boy coming into court, but he
grew more confident during his testimony. I remember him not
being able to say the word murder or killing.
Speaker 3 (12:50):
He had been brainwashed and pressured by his own mother
in Cecilia since he was just a kid.
Speaker 7 (12:56):
I think the too first two to three days off
his testimony, he would just say yeah and then it happened.
Then that happened, assuming a murder, or then I was
strangled the guy, and then it happened. So it was
very interesting to see how he evolved during his testimony.
I think getting freeing himself from the bondage of his mother,
(13:18):
the bondage of Cecilia being in their service.
Speaker 3 (13:22):
LaRue's striking neck tattoo of a large marionette puppet took
on a symbolic new meaning throughout the course of the
trial as he found his footing in court. LaRue's confidence
may have been boosted by his budding friendship with journalist
Murtzka Kotsare. LaRue confided in Mritzka about all the ways
(13:44):
he was abused by his mother and Cecilia.
Speaker 10 (13:47):
His mother beat him up because how dare he questioned Cecilia.
You know, and as really said, he said to me,
the one time his mother hit him more than thirty times,
she hit him so hard he waved his bed.
Speaker 2 (14:00):
And this was when he was sixteen years old.
Speaker 3 (14:05):
Even behind bars, LaRue feared Cecilia's spectral wrath.
Speaker 10 (14:09):
There's actually one time where he was in jail, he's
been sentenced.
Speaker 2 (14:14):
We asked me about Eestro travel.
Speaker 10 (14:18):
He actually genuinely asked me if I thought it was real?
And do I think Cecilia can get to him and HARMI?
And I'm like lyuy, you know, this is a bunch
of shit, Come on now, But it just shows you
how long he's been manipulated. You know, sitting in jail
is like, what if Cecilia can sneak into my cell
and come and hurt me?
Speaker 11 (14:37):
You know.
Speaker 3 (14:38):
What the public didn't know, however, was that Maritzka and
LaRue's relationship had evolved from journalists and suspect to a
friendship and then to a fully fledged romance. When that
lasted for two and a half years. They were already
an item before the Rue was even officially sentenced. In
twenty eighteen, me the day before you.
Speaker 2 (15:01):
Were sentenced, will I be his girlfriend?
Speaker 10 (15:03):
And at that point, you know, I kind of like froze,
because like the half of me thought, what's the arm
of being someone's girlfriend in jail.
Speaker 2 (15:11):
I'll never get.
Speaker 10 (15:12):
Involved like that, And the other half of me felt
sorry for him, you know, like, how can I say
no now, knowing that tomorrow is getting sentenced for let's
say twenty or twenty five years, so, you know, and
I just said yes.
Speaker 2 (15:26):
You know, but I did like him. I had a
crush on it. But can you I.
Speaker 10 (15:29):
Imagine the first day that this is now my boyfriend,
I'm standing in court looking at how he's being sentenced.
Speaker 2 (15:36):
That was really a very sad, you know moment.
Speaker 3 (15:40):
Maritzka was married at the time, and the couple had
a young daughter. By twenty nineteen, with the case mounting
against Cecilia Zach and Marcel Zach got wind of their
relationship and tried to use it to his advantage.
Speaker 10 (15:55):
Zach was the only one that had a private attorney.
Everyone else had to state attorneys. Zach's parents by that
lawyer over two million rangers to you know, help him
get away with murder. So one of their plans was
to get me subpoena to tell the court that the
police was using me.
Speaker 3 (16:12):
Zach's attorney aimed to get LaRue's testimony stricken from the record.
He argued that Maritzka was working with Ben and the
task team to influence Laru's story. While Maritzka's behavior is
indeed a breach of journalistic ethics, Zach's attempt to leverage
her in LaRue's love for his own gain caught her
off guard.
Speaker 10 (16:33):
I've never in my life loved the story like this,
like the drama, the one that I'm sitting there and
the investigating officer phones me and he's like, listen, yeah,
and I want to scare you, but you might be
called to court.
Speaker 2 (16:45):
I'm like, for fucking what, you know, because I'm covering this.
Speaker 10 (16:49):
He's like, no, Zach's attorney is trying to say that
the police is using me to manipulate LaRue.
Speaker 3 (17:08):
Early in twenty nineteen, in a desperate act of self preservation,
Zach Valentine and his lawyer tried to sell the story
that Maritzka was a pawn used by the police to
convince LaRue to stay on his confessional track. If this
were true, it would discredit LaRue's testimony and further complicate
(17:29):
the case against EPD. Maritzka fought to stay off the stand.
Speaker 10 (17:34):
I'm like a hell to the notice because now can
you not imagine I need to appear in court. I'm
a journalist. Now I need to go explain. So I
was like, this shit is not going down, you know.
Speaker 3 (17:46):
The judge recognized that there were more important issues at
stake than an accused killer's girlfriend and rejected the requests
from Zach's attorney.
Speaker 2 (17:55):
And luckily the judge threw it outside.
Speaker 10 (17:57):
Was like, whew, I dodged the bullets, okay, But little
did I know I did not dodge a bullet the
whole I don't know, like nine yards were coming from me.
Speaker 3 (18:06):
But Zach and his lawyer didn't quit.
Speaker 10 (18:09):
After that failed, Zach's girlfriend went to a Sunday newspaper.
So it's basically the place where I worked, the sister publication.
Speaker 3 (18:18):
Can we pause? Are you telling me Zach had a girlfriend?
Speaker 2 (18:21):
It was actually his fiance.
Speaker 10 (18:22):
How can that woman date Zach? Isn't she Scaredy's gonna
murder as well? But anyways, back to how I saw
my ass.
Speaker 2 (18:31):
Okay.
Speaker 3 (18:34):
That same week, Maritzka's life began to crumble.
Speaker 2 (18:38):
When I rapped at work.
Speaker 10 (18:40):
My boss phoned me and she said to me, from
this point on, I'm not allowed to speak to anyone anymore.
I'm not allowed to speak to my colleagues. I'm not
allowed to go out on stories.
Speaker 3 (18:52):
By the end of the week, she lost her job.
Speaker 10 (18:55):
By the friday that I arrived at work. As I
got to the entrance, the h old lady was waiting
there for me. I didn't even enter that building. They
took my laptop, they took my access card, and they
suspended me.
Speaker 3 (19:09):
Although her marriage had been falling apart for a while,
she was still living in the house she shared with
her husband and their young daughter.
Speaker 10 (19:17):
I'm a married woman, so now I'm finding my husband.
Then my favorite police contact, right, I may said, you listen, hear, colonel,
I need to tell you something.
Speaker 2 (19:28):
And then she said to me, yes, she saw online.
I'm like what.
Speaker 10 (19:32):
So while I was driving home, they already put out
a press release saying that I've been suspended in connection
with the murders.
Speaker 3 (19:40):
Maritzka could be charged with obstruction of justice in connection
with eleven murders. Serious charges.
Speaker 10 (19:47):
So now you must know, like everyone like suspects what's
going on here. But that's still nothing, because this is
the Friday Sunday morning I wake up. I wake up
not only to the news of my a fay everyway,
but I mean on the lamp.
Speaker 3 (20:03):
Pulls Maritzka's face next to a picture of LaRue the murderer,
plastered all over krueger'storf on the lampposts.
Speaker 10 (20:11):
It says journalists madly in love with Jilbird. That was
the craziest feeling in the world, you know, like becoming
the front page story.
Speaker 3 (20:26):
It often feels like we could dedicate an entire podcast
to just one of the many subplots orbiting around Cecilia
and EPD. This is certainly one of those times. LaRue
and Meritzka's relationship would survive this. In fact, it would
last until the COVID nineteen lockdown in twenty twenty. Maritzka's
(20:47):
insight into LaRue, however biased, did help us to understand
him as a person in a big way. She shared
with us many of the details of their relationship, introducing
a side to LaRue that we hadn't seen before. A
young man with a big heart, a human being desiring
a relationship, the comfort of a partner, something he never
(21:10):
had before. She also told us that he was experiencing
a new level of paranoia in prison. He could not
shake the profound fear that had been nurtured and reinforced
in him for years. Maritzka, looking at this some three
years later, was insightful as she reflected on how we
all build walls around ourselves, cult or no cult.
Speaker 10 (21:33):
And I remember the one day arriving at Rome, and
as I stopped in front of the gate, I thought
to myself. Everyone has their own prisons, you know. And
as I opened that gate, I thought to myself, larit
doesn't have a key to East prison, but I've got
my own key.
Speaker 3 (21:50):
Which brings us to Marcel, a young woman living inside
the prison of her own mind.
Speaker 7 (21:57):
Masel was was a bit different. I think the whole
country's sympathy lie with Marcel.
Speaker 3 (22:07):
On the stand. Two years younger than LaRue. Shy and quiet,
Marcel came across as docile and played up her innocence
behind big glasses, her style a stark contrast to the
high goth get ups of the rest of EPD. She
looked almost demure, her hair neatly pulled into a French braid,
(22:28):
almost as if she grew up in a pastoral setting.
She'd grown accustomed to saying as little as possible so
as not to defy her mother in Cecilia's orders, and
hoping against hope for her mother's affection. Here is psychologist
Rosalind McNabb.
Speaker 4 (22:44):
Marcel still did not really, She still wanted to believe
in her mom somehow until the eleventh hour, so there,
unfortunately didn't go too well for her.
Speaker 3 (22:58):
News accounts of the true paint Marcel as clearly subject
to profound manipulation, A fearful child, I.
Speaker 7 (23:06):
Think, and I obviously see their mom adoring Cecilia.
Speaker 6 (23:11):
So you can.
Speaker 7 (23:13):
Imagine this young little girl. I'm going to call it
that little girl because she was so young when she
started to live in Celia's house.
Speaker 3 (23:22):
Marcel was ten when her mother met Cecilia and thirteen
when she moved in with her and took responsibility for
all of Cecilia's needs and those of Cecilia's two young children.
Speaker 7 (23:33):
I think she was also thinking she was doing the
right thing, because the adults all had consensus on this,
so this had to be the right thing.
Speaker 3 (23:41):
Marcel confided in Rosalind that she had looked up to Cecilia.
Speaker 4 (23:45):
Marcel speaks about how she really adlass Cecilia. I mean
she thought that this woman was her hero. She trist
like she heard it most of the members of that group.
She thought that whatever she said was amazing. She was
(24:07):
her role model. She spoke about her in a speech at.
Speaker 3 (24:11):
School, especially after witnessing Michaela's murder. Marcel had no female
role models in her life, but just like her brother,
Marcel grew up right there on the witness stand in
front of the world.
Speaker 7 (24:25):
Marcelle was a little shy girl coming into the court.
You could definitely see her youthfulness. I don't want to
say innocence, because I mean, after killing, I don't think
I have any more of that left. But she was skid,
and I remember seeing this little girl with the big
(24:46):
eyes behind the glasses sitting in court, and as the
trial progressed, it's as if she evolved herself.
Speaker 3 (24:57):
After an entire year of watching the trial unfor and
lying on the stand it protect Cecilia, Marcel started to
reconsider the implications of staying silent.
Speaker 4 (25:07):
She realized there was in a whole moment because she
still believed, but there was a long period which the
prison wardens showed her luck. This doesn't say that in
the Bible, and that was the trigger for her.
Speaker 3 (25:25):
Marcel started thinking about coming clean to the judge. Despite
being consistently threatened by her mother in Cecilia.
Speaker 4 (25:32):
She actually said to me, my mom said to me
that if you stand up and you tell the truth,
we will kill you. In Sun City prison, Cecilia and myself,
we will kill you.
Speaker 3 (25:51):
Given the conflicting testimony, prosecutors struggled to gain traction on
murder charges against Cecilia. No one say seemed to tell
the same story of what had gone down inside the
walls of EPD. According to countless witnesses, Cecilia was said
to be in charge, but where was the proof? Here's
(26:13):
Detective Susac canotse Ceelia.
Speaker 11 (26:16):
Is the one that's got no blood in her hands.
She wasn't involved in any killing actual killing. She used
the people to do it for.
Speaker 3 (26:28):
The judge pointed out that money had clearly been given
to her, or as she claimed donated to her. Zach
Valentine and John Barnard said they thought the money they
were giving her was going to an orphanage, but her
accounts didn't balance out. Cecilia argued from the witness stand
that this was not evidence of her involvement in the murders.
(26:49):
When the judge pressed her for answers to why others
were donating money to her, Cecilia would calmly, dispassionately reply,
you have to ask them. Is the Catholic Church to
blame for donations it receives from a mob boss. This
was essentially Cecilia's legal argument. It may not have been
(27:10):
legally sound, but it was effective. It confused the question
of culpability and guilt. According to Cecilia's recollection, people just
did things for her. That was their choice. Another reason
it was hard for prosecutors to assign blame to Secilia
was that there was no clear structure in EPD. There
(27:30):
was no clear chain of command, no contracts between them
and no evidence of direct kill orders, and so if
someone testified that Cecilia told them to kill for her,
she simply refuted it. That is until the puzzle pieces,
which had so stubbornly refused to come together, were picked
up by Marcel.
Speaker 2 (27:51):
Do you realize the mistake?
Speaker 7 (27:52):
Mettrial and she decided to actually come.
Speaker 4 (27:54):
Forward with the truth.
Speaker 3 (28:03):
When Marcel Stein took the witness stand in May of
twenty nineteen, she laid the pieces of the puzzle out
for the courtroom with the breathless ease of someone who'd
seen it all before.
Speaker 5 (28:16):
She was supposed to testify. Stepmother phoned me and said
that Marcel wanted to change to plea and I said, no,
it's too light now to chimes to plea. The only
thing she can do now is going to tell the truth.
Speaker 3 (28:28):
She painted a clear picture for the judge. It was
a remarkable moment in the proceedings.
Speaker 7 (28:33):
And I don't want to call it testimony because it
wasn't really a testimony. It wasn't planned, it wasn't a
confession like a form of confession. She just decided she's
going to tell the court now what she knows.
Speaker 3 (28:47):
Once again, observing Jana Marx noticed the change in Marcel
as she mustered up the courage to speak her truth
in front of the judge.
Speaker 7 (28:57):
I remember two three days prior to that, started to
apply some makeup. Suddenly, this little girl with the big eyes,
the scared eyes, scared of the ccenia are definitely scared
of her mother, evolved into a woman making up her
own mind.
Speaker 3 (29:13):
During Marcel's riveting speech, her brilliant mind was on full display.
Speaker 5 (29:19):
She tried to play the child caught to get a
lesser sentence, but the judge didn't fall for that because
when she started fighting with her own advocate in court,
in front of the judge and telling the judge what
the advocate was supposed to do, the advocate saw that
this school is very very clever.
Speaker 3 (29:41):
By advocate Ben Means, Marcel's lawyer, not to be confused
with Roseline McNabb, the child advocate we've been hearing from.
It was clear Marcel had read up on the law
and knew her rights.
Speaker 4 (29:54):
It was quite difficult to convince the judge that this
was someone with a hi IQ at very low.
Speaker 3 (30:01):
Eq IQ being logistic intelligence and problem solving, and EQ
referring to emotional awareness being able to identify, evaluate, express,
and control emotions, and.
Speaker 4 (30:16):
That she really was emotionally manipulated, and that she really
believed in this astral travel and everything that Cecilia had
told her, and she felt as if she couldn't get away,
and that she was being watched and then also doing
(30:36):
everything that her mom wanted.
Speaker 3 (30:43):
The judge then had a choice after observing how smart
she was. He could take her savvy as a sign
that she might be able to work her way out
of the victimization she'd suffered, or he could use it
against her. He chose the latter, claim she had ample
opportunity to reach out to an adult at school during
(31:04):
her time spent living with Cecilia, and that she had
the option to come forward as her brother had, but
she chose not.
Speaker 5 (31:10):
To and that's why I also sentenced her to life imprisonment.
Speaker 3 (31:17):
Electis Perdeis was found guilty on June third, twenty nineteen.
Speaker 4 (31:23):
This Wasn't Elebret Conspiracy.
Speaker 3 (31:26):
About six weeks later, on August nineteenth, they were sentenced.
Speaker 12 (31:31):
Timurd up Natasha Perga, timurd up, Choi Panzaya, tim murder
of Reginal Pendixon, timurd up Mikaela Valentan Peter Mayer, John Mayer,
Jera Jackson, Glenn McGregor, Anthony Scholfield, Kevin mcgalpan, Jana Latochan,
all the disease were innocent and did not deserve to die.
Speaker 3 (31:53):
Cecilia Stein was given thirteen life sentences plus one hundred
and fifty two years for eleven murders. Zach Valentine eight
life sentences plus sixty six years for seven murders. Marcel Stein,
now twenty one years old, was served seven life sentences
(32:16):
plus one hundred and forty four years for eight murders.
Speaker 5 (32:22):
At the age of that, I've got thirty nine life
sentences and more than two thousand years in prisonment for
these people.
Speaker 3 (32:33):
So, while the judge took into consideration her age and
all the manipulation, Marcel coming forward with the truth didn't
really do her much good in terms of sentencing. After
an entire life of being conditioned to not trust yourself
and your own instincts, the courage that Marcel must have
(32:54):
had to find in herself is staggering.
Speaker 7 (32:57):
I do know that's Marenda.
Speaker 2 (33:00):
She didn't really love her kids.
Speaker 7 (33:01):
You can see that from her just giving Marcel to
Cecilia as some sort of prize.
Speaker 3 (33:11):
I asked Mirinda about this, her upbringing and a relationship
to her own children. Again, the noise inside the prison
visiting room was so bad that this is an actor
reading her response.
Speaker 2 (33:23):
You know, we grew up.
Speaker 1 (33:26):
We grew up in a generation where our parents, my
parents never until to day ever told me that they
loved me, ever wagged me or anything like that. They
would kiss you, allow goodbye, you know, but that's it.
So I think I was maybe over loving and overprotective
with my children, but they knew I loved them and
I was a good mother.
Speaker 3 (33:49):
Throughout our conversation, Marinda spoke highly of Marcel, told me
that her daughter was good and had no part in
any of the crimes. The judge honored Marcel's fear for
her life and her wishes not to be anywhere near
her mother in Cecilia. He sentenced Marcel not to Sun's city,
but to a prison in Pretoria. Whether Marinda admits it
(34:11):
or not, her self proclaimed affectionless upbringing has been passed
down well. I think it's safe to say that Marcel
and LaRue's experience was quite a bit more severe than
Marenda's circumstances growing up. But all of this seems to
be the product of a corrupt and broken system, old
antiquated traditions, ones that victimize and suppress. They're dangerous. Forcing
(34:37):
human beings into social constructs will cause them to lash out.
Here is our resident scholar, doctor Niki Falkoff.
Speaker 13 (34:46):
We could even speculate that, you know her character as
this kind of idealized mom teacher, perfect suburban white lady.
There's something fundamentally flawed in that characterization of white South
African women. I mean, it's possible that her identity, rather
(35:06):
than protecting her from this kind of manipulation, actually made
her even more vulnerable to it.
Speaker 3 (35:11):
Belonging to belong is a very basic, primal impulse, one
of protection and self preservation. We need each other to survive.
This was even true for the followers of Queen Havoc.
Speaker 7 (35:24):
Didn't feel that they belonged anyway, didn't feel wanted by society,
and then they meet this woman and she just say
you will welcome. Everyone is welcome. Yet if no one
wants you, I want you. And I think that was
extremely satisfying for everyone. They wanted to be part of
a group, They wanted to stay part.
Speaker 3 (35:42):
Of a group. By the time LaRue was grown, he
was thoroughly conditioned to be rewarded for demonstrating brutality. His
self worth became tied to how savagely he could kill
another person.
Speaker 10 (35:55):
You would think the one side of him would rebell
and run away, but yet Ezaki surrenders. He submerges, you know,
and he wanted to prove himself. That's why he did
the murders in Eduay. He wanted to show that he's worthy.
And it's actually said, you know.
Speaker 3 (36:11):
All this is to say that it's important to consider
the walls that each of us have created around our
hearts and minds, and who we choose to reside within them.
Cults are scary, sure, but they are not altogether rare
or really even counterculture when you think about it. It's
right there in the word culture. It's in our nature
(36:34):
to cultivate community. These concepts came alive in Cecilia's own
story when on the stand she claimed psychological and physical
abuse as a child, and when my producing partner Jennifer,
and I went into the prison again to meet Cecilia,
she elaborated, this was a moment I had been thinking
(36:56):
about and anticipating for over two years, I have to
admit I wanted to meet Cecilia Stein. Remember, prison in
South Africa differs greatly from the United States. There were
no shackles, no cuffs, nothing really protecting us from the
prisoners in the room. Even Ritzka described how she and
(37:19):
the rue sneak kisses during the visiting hours when the
guards turn their backs. We'll go into more detail in
our bonus episode about what it was like being in
Cecilia's presence, but for the moment, we'd like to just
share with you some of Cecilia's reflections. In an attempt
to answer some questions posed at the beginning of this podcast,
(37:39):
what drives our inherent human need to belong to something
and how do our relationships serve to satiate this primal desire,
We asked her to share her thoughts on the human
condition and our need for connection. To be clear, what
you're hearing this time is not an actor Celia Stein's
(38:01):
actual voice.
Speaker 6 (38:03):
I think the only people that really love you unconditionally
is your children, the way they look at you, the
way they trust you unconditionally, the way they would hug
you and and wait for you to go with them.
Because if you're scared to walk down a dark hallway,
or you know, truly feel unconditionally loved is by your children.
(38:27):
You can say your parents or whatever, but you look
at some people's parents' parents can be vindictive.
Speaker 3 (38:34):
Colonel Christelle Boisen share this anecdote from Cecilia's childhood.
Speaker 14 (38:39):
What we've been told is that Cecilia was actually one
of a twin boy twin he died in Vitra. So
when she grew up, her mother blamed her for the
death of her twin. So she grew up with this
I have the power to kill. I started killing when
I was in my mother's womb.
Speaker 3 (39:00):
Growing up under such serious maternal blaming, plus whatever else
might have happened to her as a young person read
a deep distrust of others. She shared with us a
terrifying memory from when she was only fifteen.
Speaker 6 (39:16):
I was fifteen, Me and my girlfriend at a time
were at a friend of ours brother's twenty first birthday
party about two o'clock in the morning. We decided, okay,
stunt for us to go, and everybody was drinking, so
we said, you know what, we can walk on our
(39:38):
way home. We went through a shopping center's parking area.
The guy came walking up to us, asking me for
a lighter. So I bent down, obviously going through my
pockets looking for a lighter. And as I looked up,
he was standing there with a knife. So this guy's
(39:59):
robbing us. Without thinking, I grabbed the blade of his
knife my hand, bring to my pocket. Next thing I know,
my knife was in my hand, and the next thing
it was in his throat.
Speaker 3 (40:20):
It's hard to believe the things that Cecilia says. Still,
if this first murder did in fact happen when she
was fifteen, it looks like it created a butterfly effect
that would show her just how fragile a human life is.
Speaker 6 (40:35):
When everything was done and he was lying in the
parking lot and I'm sitting on the sidewalk, I'm looking
at this guy and thinking this is impossible. It can't
be that easy for a human being to die. Obviously,
all the emotions you go through afterwards, your body goes
in to shock, your nauses, you want to pass out,
(40:56):
you want to throw up, all at the same time,
your scared, you're confused, and you realize how easy it
is for someone to die, how easy it is for
you to take someone's life.
Speaker 3 (41:09):
Based on what Cecilia shared with us about her perspective
on humanity, it seems that she was she is bereft
of hope.
Speaker 6 (41:19):
I personally think that that humans is I don't know,
specie that does not deserve to survive. If you look
at the way we act, the way we behave towards
each other, I would think twice about killing a spider
or something like that. A spiders the it does its job.
(41:40):
It doesn't judge you, it doesn't lie to you, it
doesn't steal from you. It just does what it has
to do and then goes on its merry way. Insects,
animals completely natural. It's humans that are unnatural.
Speaker 3 (41:55):
It also seems Cecilia's longing to belong was so strong,
her need for a ten time so robust, and her
sense of connection so lacking early on, that she created
an environment in which those around her would never leave her,
a kind of emotional symbiosis to make sure they'd stick around.
(42:15):
In her mind, she was making them feel welcome and
feeding their desire for some kind of greater purpose. She
prayed on that I.
Speaker 6 (42:25):
Think we all want to belong somewhere, you know, feel
like you're part of something feel like you have a purpose.
Speaker 3 (42:33):
And Mirinda learned a lot from her. That two have
a deep reverence for each other. Even today, Mirinda especially
still idolizes Cecilia.
Speaker 1 (42:45):
God put in my heart that she loves me just
as much as I love her. It's like we are
twins that type of connection, not the same person like.
Speaker 3 (42:57):
Soultai twins. How's that for Irony?
Speaker 6 (43:01):
Me and Mironda close? You know, we're good friends.
Speaker 2 (43:07):
We have a relationship where we can tell each.
Speaker 6 (43:09):
Other anything, and you know, just by a look, you know,
in what mood someone is. She's the first person I
tell when something's wrong. She's an amazing person. She's really
an amazing person.
Speaker 3 (43:22):
Marinda's love perhaps went a bit further.
Speaker 13 (43:26):
I joked about it.
Speaker 1 (43:27):
I joked about it, you know, like I'm discovering that
I'm also gay. It's a pity we couldn't have gone
for each other. But it would feel like incest just
because I think she's the perfect person. You know, it's
kind of if we could date, that would have been
(43:47):
the perfect thing, but sadly it would just be wrong.
Speaker 3 (43:55):
While this information does ground these two terrifying people for us,
it does not, by any means excuse their actions, neither
exhibits a scrap of remorse.
Speaker 1 (44:08):
I felt this compassion with these people. I felt very
sorry for them, But what can I say. I'm not
sorry that I killed them.
Speaker 3 (44:17):
Four years into her thirteen life sentences, Cecilia still denies
any involvement with the murders.
Speaker 6 (44:25):
I'm not a person that really regreates things easily. I
regret what I put my children through. I regret the
impact it has on them. But I think I've learned
a lot in that.
Speaker 4 (44:38):
You know, so.
Speaker 6 (44:42):
I don't have a lot of regrets in my life.
Speaker 3 (44:50):
Through everything, this case, these people, this story that has
been a part of my life for over three years.
I keep coming back to this hard but simple truth
that good people can do horrible things, and that bad
people are capable of good. That's not to oversimplify the
(45:12):
lives of the victims and their families. The sheer destruction
that Cecilia Stein and Electus Perdaeus caused is staggering, but
the fact remains. We all have a dark side, two
wolves that live inside each of us. Whichever one we
feed takes over. The choice is ours. We get to
(45:35):
choose how far will go for belonging to quote the
Great Joan Didion. We tell ourselves stories in order to live.
Cecilia Stein told her followers' stories in order to kill.
She fed them these stories in order to shroud them
in a sense of purpose. She used these stories to
(45:58):
satiate the primal need to belong. Stories have power, They
feed the wolf. They are the way we navigate our world.
So I suppose this forces the question, what stories are
you telling yourself? Thank you all for joining us on
(46:19):
this adventure. It has truly been an honor to be
your host. Be good to each other and yourselves. Join
us for our bonus episode. You'll hear more unbelievably candid
moments with Cecilia Stein herself and an update on the
current investigation against the corrupt cops, as well as behind
(46:43):
the scenes conversations about our adventures in South Africa. Queen
Havoc and Her Murder Cult is a production of Schooly
Humans and iHeart Podcasts. Queen Havoc is hosted and created
by me Kurt Kupachek, produced and written by Jennifer Takeny,
(47:03):
Julia Chriscau, and Kirk Kupachick. Lead producer is Julia Chriscau.
Story editor is Saren Burnett. Senior producer is Amelia Brock.
Production manager is Daisy Church. Original music composed by Claire Campbell, Editing,
sound design and scoring by Jesse Niswanger. Additional editing by
(47:26):
Miranda Hawkins. Associate producers are DaShan Moodley and Jermaine Kriher.
Additional producing by Ben Melman, fact checking by Dennis Webster.
Recording engineers are Graham Gibson, Clay Hillenberg, and Josh Hook.
Brenda Stein was read by Angelique Pretorius. Ria Grunovald's testimony
(47:49):
is read by Madeline Page. Executive producers are Virginia Prescott, L. C. Crowley,
Brandon Barr, Jennifer Ta Kenny and Kurt Kupachick. We want
to thank all of those who so generously welcomed us
in South Africa and shared their stories. We're incredibly grateful
to you all. We also want to acknowledge how traumatic
(48:12):
these events are for the victims and their families. Please
respect their privacy. If you or someone you know has
been affected by cult behaviors, there are resources available, including
Voices for Dignity at Christine Murray dot com
School of Humans.
Speaker 2 (00:05):
This show follows the investigation of serial murders and contains
material that may be disturbing. Listener discretion advised.
Speaker 3 (00:18):
In May of twenty eighteen, the case against Cecilia Stein
and Electus Perdeis was moved from district to High Court.
Since the group's arrest in twenty sixteen, nearly two years
had gone by. In that time, Ben Boysen had to
reassemble case files from six years prior and piece together
(00:38):
all that had happened since twenty twelve in order to
connect EPD to the murders and get them convicted. Back
in twenty sixteen, John Barnard turned state's witness. He'd agreed
to testify against EPD, which got him out of a
life sentence he would serve twenty years. LaRue was also
(00:59):
now a fitly a witness for the state. His testimony
against Cecilia, his mother, and Zach Valentine is how the
prosecution tied EPD to the twenty twelve murders. LaRue and
John Barnard's statements, paired with all the evidence gathered by
detectives Susette Canose and Captain Johann ban Vick, made epd's
involvement plausible beyond a reasonable doubt, not to mention the
(01:24):
guns in Mirinda's classroom and the blood found on her carpet,
blood later discovered to be that of Anthony Schofield. Psychologist
Rosalind McNabb was hired by the state to advocate for Marcel,
who was under age when the crimes were committed. Like
all those who heard Marinda's accounts of the murders, McNabb
(01:46):
recalls being deeply disturbed.
Speaker 4 (01:48):
On the stand, she lied blatantly to save Cecilia. I
killed Reginald, and I enjoyed every minute of an antit
it because I want to and I wanted to feel
the power, and went into great GORYGGI detail about how
she did it and saying it had nothing to do
(02:11):
with Cecilia.
Speaker 3 (02:12):
Marinda Steyne was served eleven life sentences and one hundred
and fifteen years for eleven murders. The two years that
LaRue spent behind bars provided him ample time to consider
the sting of his mother's betrayal, her many betrayals, but
especially the altering of her will. On the stand, Marinda
(02:35):
claimed she was the mastermind behind all the murders and
implicated l Ruin Zach in her statements, she excluded Cecilia
and Marcel from this testimony. In a rare act of
motherly love. For his testimony, LaRue was offered a reduced
sentence of twenty five years. Ben Boysen remembers the verdict
(02:56):
against LaRue.
Speaker 5 (02:58):
LaRue Croit when found guilty and in front of his mother,
he said, thank you captain for sending this pitch to
jail and pointing at his mother. So yeah, I think
at that stage he made peace with himself that his
mother actually forced him to commit murdered.
Speaker 3 (03:21):
Cecilia, Zach, and Marcel all pleaded not guilty. Cecilia to
this day claims she knew nothing and had nothing to
do with the murders. She told me herself when I
spoke to her in prison.
Speaker 6 (03:35):
No one can force you to do anything. There's no
such thing as the devil made me do it. There's
no such thing as God made me do it. We
make our own choices, we act on our own impulses.
And Marchelle and LaRue has the reasons they did what
they did. And yeah, there's nothing anybody can say to
change someone else's mind.
Speaker 3 (03:57):
From School of Humans and I Heeart podcasts This is
Queen Havoc and Her Murder Cult. I'm your host Kurt Kupachek,
Episode ten, Court for the Queen. In twenty eighteen, the
(04:19):
year following the initial sentencing of Mirinda and LaRue, the
state called fifty two out of about two hundred witnesses
to testify against three members of Electus Perdais.
Speaker 7 (04:29):
The three that eventually winter trial was a Celia Zak.
Speaker 3 (04:34):
And Marsell Ben told us about how he had to
be careful when choosing who to call to the stand.
Anyone who believed Cecilia had ties to Satanism could have
confused the judge. Way back in the first episode we
talked about how the judicial system does take Satanism seriously,
(04:54):
but as we now know, her Satanic past was nothing
but a tool Cecilia used to convince her followers to
commit these horrendous crimes. Any connection to the devil was
contrived with no bearing on the murders themselves.
Speaker 5 (05:09):
At the end of the day, what is the dud's
going to believe in? What he is not going to believe?
You understand? So we needed to choose our witnesses to
prove our cast and not to damage our case.
Speaker 3 (05:22):
Even so, considering all that EPD had gotten away with
up to this point, faith in the judicial system was
hard to come by.
Speaker 5 (05:30):
Even when we started going to courte there was doubt
in the family's eyes that these people eventually going to
be found guilty.
Speaker 3 (05:41):
Jana Marx, working as a courtroom journalist at the time,
was used to watching trials. Yanna kept a keen eye
on all the witness's behavior and body language. She noticed
that Cecilia appeared completely unfazed by the proceedings. She Zach
and Marcel, at least at first, stuck together like a
(06:01):
little clique, hiding behind their witty rapport.
Speaker 7 (06:05):
They started as a very chetty group, a lot of fun,
fun and games. Celia is very now, she's very lively,
and she tells jokes, and that happened in court the
second They made little personal jokes and they pointed and
stayed at people, and that's.
Speaker 2 (06:21):
How it started.
Speaker 3 (06:27):
One of the key witnesses they mocked was Ria Grunivald,
epd's first victim, at least in a psychological sense, and
Cecilia's apparent motivation for the revenge killings. In twenty twelve.
It took weeks for state prosecutors and police to convince
Rhea to come out of hiding and appear in court.
(06:47):
She did so only under the condition that no photographs
be taken of her. Her testimony brought her into the
same room as Cecilia and EPD for the first time
in five years. Yanna reported that Rhea addressed the room,
stating Ria Grunivald is dead. She no longer exists. I've
(07:09):
lost everything when they died. I died. Ria's written testimony.
Speaker 8 (07:15):
Read it was a very difficult time, and I was
not able to discuss it with anyone, fearing that Sea
could be punished for speaking out. I had to be
strong for her. She also isolated me from everyone I knew.
She lied about everything. I couldn't do anything without them
(07:39):
knowing I believed her. I then decided to end my
commitment to see and I set up that appointment with
her where I was threatened. They raised his history.
Speaker 3 (07:56):
With eleven others killed. Rhea managed to escape from the
board texts of Cecilia Stein with her life. However, she
is still paying a high price. Rea lost her home,
her livelihood, she lost contact with her children, and the
rest of her family existence. As she knew it ceased.
(08:17):
It's like her life was murdered, but she went on living.
Speaker 5 (08:21):
She didn't even admit to me where she went into.
Stay till today, I Tilda and don't speak to her
a grand till Duncia. So she's still in hiding today,
Someway in South Africa.
Speaker 3 (08:38):
Some of the witnesses that took the stand included members
of Cecilia's outer circle, folks involved in the Know Your
Enemy classes she held for a time back in twenty twelve.
Neighbors of the murder victims and members of the task
team also testified. Here's Detective Hert Krueger.
Speaker 9 (08:56):
There was the witness. They were having a party next
to the house where mister McGregor was staying. They said
it was a white female where had a very funny
She was walking funny. They described it like almost like
walking like a duck and that was Merendo.
Speaker 3 (09:13):
Even Luke came out of witness protection to testify against
them and report on his chilling time around the group.
As Cecilia, Zach and Marcel witnessed their damning testimony, they
became increasingly less chummy. Their body language began to reflect
the degradation of Cecilia's mind control.
Speaker 7 (09:34):
As more testimony came forward, more evidence came forward, as
if the group literally a physically moved away from one
another on the bench.
Speaker 3 (09:44):
The more Cecilia allowed everyone else to take the blame
for her, the more Zach and Marcel recoiled.
Speaker 7 (09:50):
See how it was in the middle still just you know,
observing writings. She took notes.
Speaker 3 (09:56):
That's right, Cecilia took notes. She had I had to
keep her story straight.
Speaker 7 (10:01):
And you have Zach Valentine. Zach would literally sit on
one butt cheek like he's going to fall off the
bench at any moment. He was so far away, just
to say, away from her, and Marcel the same.
Speaker 6 (10:14):
On the other.
Speaker 3 (10:15):
Side, Marcel was in a dark place throughout the proceedings.
Each time she was called to the stand, she denied
everything which implicated her brother and made way for her
mother to continue to sacrifice her own life in exaltation
of Cecilia.
Speaker 7 (10:35):
So Mosel obviously grew more and more depressed as she realized, okay, well,
see you set up the whole trial. She planned the
whole trial in advance, and Marcel went with it.
Speaker 3 (10:45):
Ben tried talking to Marcel, but she was reluctant, even
to the point of self sabotage.
Speaker 5 (10:51):
Marcel from the beginning told me to go fuck myself.
That was her wit, her father, a real father, Rainstel lawyers,
a good advocate, and she said no, she doesn't want them,
and she's not guilty.
Speaker 3 (11:10):
Remember, the primary charge was racketeering. This was used as
a pathway to prove their involvement in the murders. This
risky and unprecedented strategy turned out to be a clever
move on Ben's Park.
Speaker 5 (11:23):
This is the first guise in the history of South Africa.
Were murderers our charged with with racketeering and was found
guilty in the I court.
Speaker 3 (11:32):
So, even though each EPD defendant had their own lawyers,
allegations against one implicated them all as.
Speaker 7 (11:40):
The trial progressed, and obviously they had their own legal representatives,
and every legal council obviously wants to exonerate their own
client and they would throw the others under the bus.
Speaker 3 (11:54):
Zach held fast to the story that he didn't remember anything,
even the day that his car caught on fire, but
Marinda describing his direct involvement while on the stand revealed
suspicious inconsistencies in the narrative. This prolonged the trial over
the course of three years from twenty sixteen through twenty nineteen.
(12:16):
Electis Perdaeis only spent a total of sixty days in court,
but prosecutors were relentless in their pursuit of the truth.
The most critical testimonies, though, were the ones given by
LaRue and Barnard. Again, Jana Marx noted LaRue's physical and
emotive language.
Speaker 7 (12:36):
LaRue not a small boy coming into court, but he
grew more confident during his testimony. I remember him not
being able to say the word murder or killing.
Speaker 3 (12:50):
He had been brainwashed and pressured by his own mother
in Cecilia since he was just a kid.
Speaker 7 (12:56):
I think the too first two to three days off
his testimony, he would just say yeah and then it happened.
Then that happened, assuming a murder, or then I was
strangled the guy, and then it happened. So it was
very interesting to see how he evolved during his testimony.
I think getting freeing himself from the bondage of his mother,
(13:18):
the bondage of Cecilia being in their service.
Speaker 3 (13:22):
LaRue's striking neck tattoo of a large marionette puppet took
on a symbolic new meaning throughout the course of the
trial as he found his footing in court. LaRue's confidence
may have been boosted by his budding friendship with journalist
Murtzka Kotsare. LaRue confided in Mritzka about all the ways
(13:44):
he was abused by his mother and Cecilia.
Speaker 10 (13:47):
His mother beat him up because how dare he questioned Cecilia.
You know, and as really said, he said to me,
the one time his mother hit him more than thirty times,
she hit him so hard he waved his bed.
Speaker 2 (14:00):
And this was when he was sixteen years old.
Speaker 3 (14:05):
Even behind bars, LaRue feared Cecilia's spectral wrath.
Speaker 10 (14:09):
There's actually one time where he was in jail, he's
been sentenced.
Speaker 2 (14:14):
We asked me about Eestro travel.
Speaker 10 (14:18):
He actually genuinely asked me if I thought it was real?
And do I think Cecilia can get to him and HARMI?
And I'm like lyuy, you know, this is a bunch
of shit, Come on now, But it just shows you
how long he's been manipulated. You know, sitting in jail
is like, what if Cecilia can sneak into my cell
and come and hurt me?
Speaker 11 (14:37):
You know.
Speaker 3 (14:38):
What the public didn't know, however, was that Maritzka and
LaRue's relationship had evolved from journalists and suspect to a
friendship and then to a fully fledged romance. When that
lasted for two and a half years. They were already
an item before the Rue was even officially sentenced. In
twenty eighteen, me the day before you.
Speaker 2 (15:01):
Were sentenced, will I be his girlfriend?
Speaker 10 (15:03):
And at that point, you know, I kind of like froze,
because like the half of me thought, what's the arm
of being someone's girlfriend in jail.
Speaker 2 (15:11):
I'll never get.
Speaker 10 (15:12):
Involved like that, And the other half of me felt
sorry for him, you know, like, how can I say
no now, knowing that tomorrow is getting sentenced for let's
say twenty or twenty five years, so, you know, and
I just said yes.
Speaker 2 (15:26):
You know, but I did like him. I had a
crush on it. But can you I.
Speaker 10 (15:29):
Imagine the first day that this is now my boyfriend,
I'm standing in court looking at how he's being sentenced.
Speaker 2 (15:36):
That was really a very sad, you know moment.
Speaker 3 (15:40):
Maritzka was married at the time, and the couple had
a young daughter. By twenty nineteen, with the case mounting
against Cecilia Zach and Marcel Zach got wind of their
relationship and tried to use it to his advantage.
Speaker 10 (15:55):
Zach was the only one that had a private attorney.
Everyone else had to state attorneys. Zach's parents by that
lawyer over two million rangers to you know, help him
get away with murder. So one of their plans was
to get me subpoena to tell the court that the
police was using me.
Speaker 3 (16:12):
Zach's attorney aimed to get LaRue's testimony stricken from the record.
He argued that Maritzka was working with Ben and the
task team to influence Laru's story. While Maritzka's behavior is
indeed a breach of journalistic ethics, Zach's attempt to leverage
her in LaRue's love for his own gain caught her
off guard.
Speaker 10 (16:33):
I've never in my life loved the story like this,
like the drama, the one that I'm sitting there and
the investigating officer phones me and he's like, listen, yeah,
and I want to scare you, but you might be
called to court.
Speaker 2 (16:45):
I'm like, for fucking what, you know, because I'm covering this.
Speaker 10 (16:49):
He's like, no, Zach's attorney is trying to say that
the police is using me to manipulate LaRue.
Speaker 3 (17:08):
Early in twenty nineteen, in a desperate act of self preservation,
Zach Valentine and his lawyer tried to sell the story
that Maritzka was a pawn used by the police to
convince LaRue to stay on his confessional track. If this
were true, it would discredit LaRue's testimony and further complicate
(17:29):
the case against EPD. Maritzka fought to stay off the stand.
Speaker 10 (17:34):
I'm like a hell to the notice because now can
you not imagine I need to appear in court. I'm
a journalist. Now I need to go explain. So I
was like, this shit is not going down, you know.
Speaker 3 (17:46):
The judge recognized that there were more important issues at
stake than an accused killer's girlfriend and rejected the requests
from Zach's attorney.
Speaker 2 (17:55):
And luckily the judge threw it outside.
Speaker 10 (17:57):
Was like, whew, I dodged the bullets, okay, But little
did I know I did not dodge a bullet the
whole I don't know, like nine yards were coming from me.
Speaker 3 (18:06):
But Zach and his lawyer didn't quit.
Speaker 10 (18:09):
After that failed, Zach's girlfriend went to a Sunday newspaper.
So it's basically the place where I worked, the sister publication.
Speaker 3 (18:18):
Can we pause? Are you telling me Zach had a girlfriend?
Speaker 2 (18:21):
It was actually his fiance.
Speaker 10 (18:22):
How can that woman date Zach? Isn't she Scaredy's gonna
murder as well? But anyways, back to how I saw
my ass.
Speaker 2 (18:31):
Okay.
Speaker 3 (18:34):
That same week, Maritzka's life began to crumble.
Speaker 2 (18:38):
When I rapped at work.
Speaker 10 (18:40):
My boss phoned me and she said to me, from
this point on, I'm not allowed to speak to anyone anymore.
I'm not allowed to speak to my colleagues. I'm not
allowed to go out on stories.
Speaker 3 (18:52):
By the end of the week, she lost her job.
Speaker 10 (18:55):
By the friday that I arrived at work. As I
got to the entrance, the h old lady was waiting
there for me. I didn't even enter that building. They
took my laptop, they took my access card, and they
suspended me.
Speaker 3 (19:09):
Although her marriage had been falling apart for a while,
she was still living in the house she shared with
her husband and their young daughter.
Speaker 10 (19:17):
I'm a married woman, so now I'm finding my husband.
Then my favorite police contact, right, I may said, you listen, hear, colonel,
I need to tell you something.
Speaker 2 (19:28):
And then she said to me, yes, she saw online.
I'm like what.
Speaker 10 (19:32):
So while I was driving home, they already put out
a press release saying that I've been suspended in connection
with the murders.
Speaker 3 (19:40):
Maritzka could be charged with obstruction of justice in connection
with eleven murders. Serious charges.
Speaker 10 (19:47):
So now you must know, like everyone like suspects what's
going on here. But that's still nothing, because this is
the Friday Sunday morning I wake up. I wake up
not only to the news of my a fay everyway,
but I mean on the lamp.
Speaker 3 (20:03):
Pulls Maritzka's face next to a picture of LaRue the murderer,
plastered all over krueger'storf on the lampposts.
Speaker 10 (20:11):
It says journalists madly in love with Jilbird. That was
the craziest feeling in the world, you know, like becoming
the front page story.
Speaker 3 (20:26):
It often feels like we could dedicate an entire podcast
to just one of the many subplots orbiting around Cecilia
and EPD. This is certainly one of those times. LaRue
and Meritzka's relationship would survive this. In fact, it would
last until the COVID nineteen lockdown in twenty twenty. Maritzka's
(20:47):
insight into LaRue, however biased, did help us to understand
him as a person in a big way. She shared
with us many of the details of their relationship, introducing
a side to LaRue that we hadn't seen before. A
young man with a big heart, a human being desiring
a relationship, the comfort of a partner, something he never
(21:10):
had before. She also told us that he was experiencing
a new level of paranoia in prison. He could not
shake the profound fear that had been nurtured and reinforced
in him for years. Maritzka, looking at this some three
years later, was insightful as she reflected on how we
all build walls around ourselves, cult or no cult.
Speaker 10 (21:33):
And I remember the one day arriving at Rome, and
as I stopped in front of the gate, I thought
to myself. Everyone has their own prisons, you know. And
as I opened that gate, I thought to myself, larit
doesn't have a key to East prison, but I've got
my own key.
Speaker 3 (21:50):
Which brings us to Marcel, a young woman living inside
the prison of her own mind.
Speaker 7 (21:57):
Masel was was a bit different. I think the whole
country's sympathy lie with Marcel.
Speaker 3 (22:07):
On the stand. Two years younger than LaRue. Shy and quiet,
Marcel came across as docile and played up her innocence
behind big glasses, her style a stark contrast to the
high goth get ups of the rest of EPD. She
looked almost demure, her hair neatly pulled into a French braid,
(22:28):
almost as if she grew up in a pastoral setting.
She'd grown accustomed to saying as little as possible so
as not to defy her mother in Cecilia's orders, and
hoping against hope for her mother's affection. Here is psychologist
Rosalind McNabb.
Speaker 4 (22:44):
Marcel still did not really, She still wanted to believe
in her mom somehow until the eleventh hour, so there,
unfortunately didn't go too well for her.
Speaker 3 (22:58):
News accounts of the true paint Marcel as clearly subject
to profound manipulation, A fearful child, I.
Speaker 7 (23:06):
Think, and I obviously see their mom adoring Cecilia.
Speaker 6 (23:11):
So you can.
Speaker 7 (23:13):
Imagine this young little girl. I'm going to call it
that little girl because she was so young when she
started to live in Celia's house.
Speaker 3 (23:22):
Marcel was ten when her mother met Cecilia and thirteen
when she moved in with her and took responsibility for
all of Cecilia's needs and those of Cecilia's two young children.
Speaker 7 (23:33):
I think she was also thinking she was doing the
right thing, because the adults all had consensus on this,
so this had to be the right thing.
Speaker 3 (23:41):
Marcel confided in Rosalind that she had looked up to Cecilia.
Speaker 4 (23:45):
Marcel speaks about how she really adlass Cecilia. I mean
she thought that this woman was her hero. She trist
like she heard it most of the members of that group.
She thought that whatever she said was amazing. She was
(24:07):
her role model. She spoke about her in a speech at.
Speaker 3 (24:11):
School, especially after witnessing Michaela's murder. Marcel had no female
role models in her life, but just like her brother,
Marcel grew up right there on the witness stand in
front of the world.
Speaker 7 (24:25):
Marcelle was a little shy girl coming into the court.
You could definitely see her youthfulness. I don't want to
say innocence, because I mean, after killing, I don't think
I have any more of that left. But she was skid,
and I remember seeing this little girl with the big
(24:46):
eyes behind the glasses sitting in court, and as the
trial progressed, it's as if she evolved herself.
Speaker 3 (24:57):
After an entire year of watching the trial unfor and
lying on the stand it protect Cecilia, Marcel started to
reconsider the implications of staying silent.
Speaker 4 (25:07):
She realized there was in a whole moment because she
still believed, but there was a long period which the
prison wardens showed her luck. This doesn't say that in
the Bible, and that was the trigger for her.
Speaker 3 (25:25):
Marcel started thinking about coming clean to the judge. Despite
being consistently threatened by her mother in Cecilia.
Speaker 4 (25:32):
She actually said to me, my mom said to me
that if you stand up and you tell the truth,
we will kill you. In Sun City prison, Cecilia and myself,
we will kill you.
Speaker 3 (25:51):
Given the conflicting testimony, prosecutors struggled to gain traction on
murder charges against Cecilia. No one say seemed to tell
the same story of what had gone down inside the
walls of EPD. According to countless witnesses, Cecilia was said
to be in charge, but where was the proof? Here's
(26:13):
Detective Susac canotse Ceelia.
Speaker 11 (26:16):
Is the one that's got no blood in her hands.
She wasn't involved in any killing actual killing. She used
the people to do it for.
Speaker 3 (26:28):
The judge pointed out that money had clearly been given
to her, or as she claimed donated to her. Zach
Valentine and John Barnard said they thought the money they
were giving her was going to an orphanage, but her
accounts didn't balance out. Cecilia argued from the witness stand
that this was not evidence of her involvement in the murders.
(26:49):
When the judge pressed her for answers to why others
were donating money to her, Cecilia would calmly, dispassionately reply,
you have to ask them. Is the Catholic Church to
blame for donations it receives from a mob boss. This
was essentially Cecilia's legal argument. It may not have been
(27:10):
legally sound, but it was effective. It confused the question
of culpability and guilt. According to Cecilia's recollection, people just
did things for her. That was their choice. Another reason
it was hard for prosecutors to assign blame to Secilia
was that there was no clear structure in EPD. There
(27:30):
was no clear chain of command, no contracts between them
and no evidence of direct kill orders, and so if
someone testified that Cecilia told them to kill for her,
she simply refuted it. That is until the puzzle pieces,
which had so stubbornly refused to come together, were picked
up by Marcel.
Speaker 2 (27:51):
Do you realize the mistake?
Speaker 7 (27:52):
Mettrial and she decided to actually come.
Speaker 4 (27:54):
Forward with the truth.
Speaker 3 (28:03):
When Marcel Stein took the witness stand in May of
twenty nineteen, she laid the pieces of the puzzle out
for the courtroom with the breathless ease of someone who'd
seen it all before.
Speaker 5 (28:16):
She was supposed to testify. Stepmother phoned me and said
that Marcel wanted to change to plea and I said, no,
it's too light now to chimes to plea. The only
thing she can do now is going to tell the truth.
Speaker 3 (28:28):
She painted a clear picture for the judge. It was
a remarkable moment in the proceedings.
Speaker 7 (28:33):
And I don't want to call it testimony because it
wasn't really a testimony. It wasn't planned, it wasn't a
confession like a form of confession. She just decided she's
going to tell the court now what she knows.
Speaker 3 (28:47):
Once again, observing Jana Marx noticed the change in Marcel
as she mustered up the courage to speak her truth
in front of the judge.
Speaker 7 (28:57):
I remember two three days prior to that, started to
apply some makeup. Suddenly, this little girl with the big eyes,
the scared eyes, scared of the ccenia are definitely scared
of her mother, evolved into a woman making up her
own mind.
Speaker 3 (29:13):
During Marcel's riveting speech, her brilliant mind was on full display.
Speaker 5 (29:19):
She tried to play the child caught to get a
lesser sentence, but the judge didn't fall for that because
when she started fighting with her own advocate in court,
in front of the judge and telling the judge what
the advocate was supposed to do, the advocate saw that
this school is very very clever.
Speaker 3 (29:41):
By advocate Ben Means, Marcel's lawyer, not to be confused
with Roseline McNabb, the child advocate we've been hearing from.
It was clear Marcel had read up on the law
and knew her rights.
Speaker 4 (29:54):
It was quite difficult to convince the judge that this
was someone with a hi IQ at very low.
Speaker 3 (30:01):
Eq IQ being logistic intelligence and problem solving, and EQ
referring to emotional awareness being able to identify, evaluate, express,
and control emotions, and.
Speaker 4 (30:16):
That she really was emotionally manipulated, and that she really
believed in this astral travel and everything that Cecilia had
told her, and she felt as if she couldn't get away,
and that she was being watched and then also doing
(30:36):
everything that her mom wanted.
Speaker 3 (30:43):
The judge then had a choice after observing how smart
she was. He could take her savvy as a sign
that she might be able to work her way out
of the victimization she'd suffered, or he could use it
against her. He chose the latter, claim she had ample
opportunity to reach out to an adult at school during
(31:04):
her time spent living with Cecilia, and that she had
the option to come forward as her brother had, but
she chose not.
Speaker 5 (31:10):
To and that's why I also sentenced her to life imprisonment.
Speaker 3 (31:17):
Electis Perdeis was found guilty on June third, twenty nineteen.
Speaker 4 (31:23):
This Wasn't Elebret Conspiracy.
Speaker 3 (31:26):
About six weeks later, on August nineteenth, they were sentenced.
Speaker 12 (31:31):
Timurd up Natasha Perga, timurd up, Choi Panzaya, tim murder
of Reginal Pendixon, timurd up Mikaela Valentan Peter Mayer, John Mayer,
Jera Jackson, Glenn McGregor, Anthony Scholfield, Kevin mcgalpan, Jana Latochan,
all the disease were innocent and did not deserve to die.
Speaker 3 (31:53):
Cecilia Stein was given thirteen life sentences plus one hundred
and fifty two years for eleven murders. Zach Valentine eight
life sentences plus sixty six years for seven murders. Marcel Stein,
now twenty one years old, was served seven life sentences
(32:16):
plus one hundred and forty four years for eight murders.
Speaker 5 (32:22):
At the age of that, I've got thirty nine life
sentences and more than two thousand years in prisonment for
these people.
Speaker 3 (32:33):
So, while the judge took into consideration her age and
all the manipulation, Marcel coming forward with the truth didn't
really do her much good in terms of sentencing. After
an entire life of being conditioned to not trust yourself
and your own instincts, the courage that Marcel must have
(32:54):
had to find in herself is staggering.
Speaker 7 (32:57):
I do know that's Marenda.
Speaker 2 (33:00):
She didn't really love her kids.
Speaker 7 (33:01):
You can see that from her just giving Marcel to
Cecilia as some sort of prize.
Speaker 3 (33:11):
I asked Mirinda about this, her upbringing and a relationship
to her own children. Again, the noise inside the prison
visiting room was so bad that this is an actor
reading her response.
Speaker 2 (33:23):
You know, we grew up.
Speaker 1 (33:26):
We grew up in a generation where our parents, my
parents never until to day ever told me that they
loved me, ever wagged me or anything like that. They
would kiss you, allow goodbye, you know, but that's it.
So I think I was maybe over loving and overprotective
with my children, but they knew I loved them and
I was a good mother.
Speaker 3 (33:49):
Throughout our conversation, Marinda spoke highly of Marcel, told me
that her daughter was good and had no part in
any of the crimes. The judge honored Marcel's fear for
her life and her wishes not to be anywhere near
her mother in Cecilia. He sentenced Marcel not to Sun's city,
but to a prison in Pretoria. Whether Marinda admits it
(34:11):
or not, her self proclaimed affectionless upbringing has been passed
down well. I think it's safe to say that Marcel
and LaRue's experience was quite a bit more severe than
Marenda's circumstances growing up. But all of this seems to
be the product of a corrupt and broken system, old
antiquated traditions, ones that victimize and suppress. They're dangerous. Forcing
(34:37):
human beings into social constructs will cause them to lash out.
Here is our resident scholar, doctor Niki Falkoff.
Speaker 13 (34:46):
We could even speculate that, you know her character as
this kind of idealized mom teacher, perfect suburban white lady.
There's something fundamentally flawed in that characterization of white South
African women. I mean, it's possible that her identity, rather
(35:06):
than protecting her from this kind of manipulation, actually made
her even more vulnerable to it.
Speaker 3 (35:11):
Belonging to belong is a very basic, primal impulse, one
of protection and self preservation. We need each other to survive.
This was even true for the followers of Queen Havoc.
Speaker 7 (35:24):
Didn't feel that they belonged anyway, didn't feel wanted by society,
and then they meet this woman and she just say
you will welcome. Everyone is welcome. Yet if no one
wants you, I want you. And I think that was
extremely satisfying for everyone. They wanted to be part of
a group, They wanted to stay part.
Speaker 3 (35:42):
Of a group. By the time LaRue was grown, he
was thoroughly conditioned to be rewarded for demonstrating brutality. His
self worth became tied to how savagely he could kill
another person.
Speaker 10 (35:55):
You would think the one side of him would rebell
and run away, but yet Ezaki surrenders. He submerges, you know,
and he wanted to prove himself. That's why he did
the murders in Eduay. He wanted to show that he's worthy.
And it's actually said, you know.
Speaker 3 (36:11):
All this is to say that it's important to consider
the walls that each of us have created around our
hearts and minds, and who we choose to reside within them.
Cults are scary, sure, but they are not altogether rare
or really even counterculture when you think about it. It's
right there in the word culture. It's in our nature
(36:34):
to cultivate community. These concepts came alive in Cecilia's own
story when on the stand she claimed psychological and physical
abuse as a child, and when my producing partner Jennifer,
and I went into the prison again to meet Cecilia,
she elaborated, this was a moment I had been thinking
(36:56):
about and anticipating for over two years, I have to
admit I wanted to meet Cecilia Stein. Remember, prison in
South Africa differs greatly from the United States. There were
no shackles, no cuffs, nothing really protecting us from the
prisoners in the room. Even Ritzka described how she and
(37:19):
the rue sneak kisses during the visiting hours when the
guards turn their backs. We'll go into more detail in
our bonus episode about what it was like being in
Cecilia's presence, but for the moment, we'd like to just
share with you some of Cecilia's reflections. In an attempt
to answer some questions posed at the beginning of this podcast,
(37:39):
what drives our inherent human need to belong to something
and how do our relationships serve to satiate this primal desire,
We asked her to share her thoughts on the human
condition and our need for connection. To be clear, what
you're hearing this time is not an actor Celia Stein's
(38:01):
actual voice.
Speaker 6 (38:03):
I think the only people that really love you unconditionally
is your children, the way they look at you, the
way they trust you unconditionally, the way they would hug
you and and wait for you to go with them.
Because if you're scared to walk down a dark hallway,
or you know, truly feel unconditionally loved is by your children.
(38:27):
You can say your parents or whatever, but you look
at some people's parents' parents can be vindictive.
Speaker 3 (38:34):
Colonel Christelle Boisen share this anecdote from Cecilia's childhood.
Speaker 14 (38:39):
What we've been told is that Cecilia was actually one
of a twin boy twin he died in Vitra. So
when she grew up, her mother blamed her for the
death of her twin. So she grew up with this
I have the power to kill. I started killing when
I was in my mother's womb.
Speaker 3 (39:00):
Growing up under such serious maternal blaming, plus whatever else
might have happened to her as a young person read
a deep distrust of others. She shared with us a
terrifying memory from when she was only fifteen.
Speaker 6 (39:16):
I was fifteen, Me and my girlfriend at a time
were at a friend of ours brother's twenty first birthday
party about two o'clock in the morning. We decided, okay,
stunt for us to go, and everybody was drinking, so
we said, you know what, we can walk on our
(39:38):
way home. We went through a shopping center's parking area.
The guy came walking up to us, asking me for
a lighter. So I bent down, obviously going through my
pockets looking for a lighter. And as I looked up,
he was standing there with a knife. So this guy's
(39:59):
robbing us. Without thinking, I grabbed the blade of his
knife my hand, bring to my pocket. Next thing I know,
my knife was in my hand, and the next thing
it was in his throat.
Speaker 3 (40:20):
It's hard to believe the things that Cecilia says. Still,
if this first murder did in fact happen when she
was fifteen, it looks like it created a butterfly effect
that would show her just how fragile a human life is.
Speaker 6 (40:35):
When everything was done and he was lying in the
parking lot and I'm sitting on the sidewalk, I'm looking
at this guy and thinking this is impossible. It can't
be that easy for a human being to die. Obviously,
all the emotions you go through afterwards, your body goes
in to shock, your nauses, you want to pass out,
(40:56):
you want to throw up, all at the same time,
your scared, you're confused, and you realize how easy it
is for someone to die, how easy it is for
you to take someone's life.
Speaker 3 (41:09):
Based on what Cecilia shared with us about her perspective
on humanity, it seems that she was she is bereft
of hope.
Speaker 6 (41:19):
I personally think that that humans is I don't know,
specie that does not deserve to survive. If you look
at the way we act, the way we behave towards
each other, I would think twice about killing a spider
or something like that. A spiders the it does its job.
(41:40):
It doesn't judge you, it doesn't lie to you, it
doesn't steal from you. It just does what it has
to do and then goes on its merry way. Insects,
animals completely natural. It's humans that are unnatural.
Speaker 3 (41:55):
It also seems Cecilia's longing to belong was so strong,
her need for a ten time so robust, and her
sense of connection so lacking early on, that she created
an environment in which those around her would never leave her,
a kind of emotional symbiosis to make sure they'd stick around.
(42:15):
In her mind, she was making them feel welcome and
feeding their desire for some kind of greater purpose. She
prayed on that I.
Speaker 6 (42:25):
Think we all want to belong somewhere, you know, feel
like you're part of something feel like you have a purpose.
Speaker 3 (42:33):
And Mirinda learned a lot from her. That two have
a deep reverence for each other. Even today, Mirinda especially
still idolizes Cecilia.
Speaker 1 (42:45):
God put in my heart that she loves me just
as much as I love her. It's like we are
twins that type of connection, not the same person like.
Speaker 3 (42:57):
Soultai twins. How's that for Irony?
Speaker 6 (43:01):
Me and Mironda close? You know, we're good friends.
Speaker 2 (43:07):
We have a relationship where we can tell each.
Speaker 6 (43:09):
Other anything, and you know, just by a look, you know,
in what mood someone is. She's the first person I
tell when something's wrong. She's an amazing person. She's really
an amazing person.
Speaker 3 (43:22):
Marinda's love perhaps went a bit further.
Speaker 13 (43:26):
I joked about it.
Speaker 1 (43:27):
I joked about it, you know, like I'm discovering that
I'm also gay. It's a pity we couldn't have gone
for each other. But it would feel like incest just
because I think she's the perfect person. You know, it's
kind of if we could date, that would have been
(43:47):
the perfect thing, but sadly it would just be wrong.
Speaker 3 (43:55):
While this information does ground these two terrifying people for us,
it does not, by any means excuse their actions, neither
exhibits a scrap of remorse.
Speaker 1 (44:08):
I felt this compassion with these people. I felt very
sorry for them, But what can I say. I'm not
sorry that I killed them.
Speaker 3 (44:17):
Four years into her thirteen life sentences, Cecilia still denies
any involvement with the murders.
Speaker 6 (44:25):
I'm not a person that really regreates things easily. I
regret what I put my children through. I regret the
impact it has on them. But I think I've learned
a lot in that.
Speaker 4 (44:38):
You know, so.
Speaker 6 (44:42):
I don't have a lot of regrets in my life.
Speaker 3 (44:50):
Through everything, this case, these people, this story that has
been a part of my life for over three years.
I keep coming back to this hard but simple truth
that good people can do horrible things, and that bad
people are capable of good. That's not to oversimplify the
(45:12):
lives of the victims and their families. The sheer destruction
that Cecilia Stein and Electus Perdaeus caused is staggering, but
the fact remains. We all have a dark side, two
wolves that live inside each of us. Whichever one we
feed takes over. The choice is ours. We get to
(45:35):
choose how far will go for belonging to quote the
Great Joan Didion. We tell ourselves stories in order to live.
Cecilia Stein told her followers' stories in order to kill.
She fed them these stories in order to shroud them
in a sense of purpose. She used these stories to
(45:58):
satiate the primal need to belong. Stories have power, They
feed the wolf. They are the way we navigate our world.
So I suppose this forces the question, what stories are
you telling yourself? Thank you all for joining us on
(46:19):
this adventure. It has truly been an honor to be
your host. Be good to each other and yourselves. Join
us for our bonus episode. You'll hear more unbelievably candid
moments with Cecilia Stein herself and an update on the
current investigation against the corrupt cops, as well as behind
(46:43):
the scenes conversations about our adventures in South Africa. Queen
Havoc and Her Murder Cult is a production of Schooly
Humans and iHeart Podcasts. Queen Havoc is hosted and created
by me Kurt Kupachek, produced and written by Jennifer Takeny,
(47:03):
Julia Chriscau, and Kirk Kupachick. Lead producer is Julia Chriscau.
Story editor is Saren Burnett. Senior producer is Amelia Brock.
Production manager is Daisy Church. Original music composed by Claire Campbell, Editing,
sound design and scoring by Jesse Niswanger. Additional editing by
(47:26):
Miranda Hawkins. Associate producers are DaShan Moodley and Jermaine Kriher.
Additional producing by Ben Melman, fact checking by Dennis Webster.
Recording engineers are Graham Gibson, Clay Hillenberg, and Josh Hook.
Brenda Stein was read by Angelique Pretorius. Ria Grunovald's testimony
(47:49):
is read by Madeline Page. Executive producers are Virginia Prescott, L. C. Crowley,
Brandon Barr, Jennifer Ta Kenny and Kurt Kupachick. We want
to thank all of those who so generously welcomed us
in South Africa and shared their stories. We're incredibly grateful
to you all. We also want to acknowledge how traumatic
(48:12):
these events are for the victims and their families. Please
respect their privacy. If you or someone you know has
been affected by cult behaviors, there are resources available, including
Voices for Dignity at Christine Murray dot com
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